Just Raise Charity For Charities

There's a simple solution to all of this. When politicians want to use their influence to raise money for charity, the money shuld go directly to the charity. They get the credit, the charity gets their money, everyone's happy. But that's not what's happening, and too many questions are being raised about just what the politicians are doing with the money.

The chairman of California's political watchdog agency says the growing practice of politicians soliciting millions for pet causes apparently is being abused for self-serving gain and needs to be reined in.

"If I could, with the stroke of a pen, I'd do away with it," said Ross Johnson, chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission.

"It's a huge end run around the contribution limits that the people of California voted for" in Proposition 34 seven years ago, he said.

Payments "at the behest of" should clearly be abolished. There's absolutely no reason for them. If you want to look like a good politician by raising money for charity, let the charity have it directly. Otherwise, you get stuff like this.

More than $5 million has been donated at politicians' request both this year and last – far more than any year since disclosure began nearly a decade ago.

The money is meant for public benefit and cannot be used for campaigning, but some has been spent in ways that enhance a politician's image, such as for billboards or television ads.

Days before a fiercely contested Democratic primary last year, for example, John Garamendi solicited $300,000 in public-benefit funds for a TV advertisement in which he touted his performance as insurance commissioner without specifically asking voters to support him in his bid for lieutenant governor, a post he ultimately won.

Just cut it out. It's nonsense.